


Tempestas

by sciencefictioness



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Demon Summoning, Incubus Shiro, M/M, Magic-Users, Mild Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-20
Updated: 2017-03-20
Packaged: 2018-10-08 13:05:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10387278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sciencefictioness/pseuds/sciencefictioness
Summary: There was a rock formation, big and intimidating, and Lance didn’t know if it was an altar built millennia ago to worship some forgotten god or something more natural.  All he knew was he could climb up to the top, and the sky belonged to him.  He could hear the ocean, just barely.  It was a perfect place to be alone, lost in the heavens, nothing but stars and the magic inside him.Magic that refused to be useful.  Refused to be tamed, refused to be directed, refused to do anything besides hum restless under his skin.Lance was lonely, but it wasn’t so glaring on top of the stones with galaxies spinning out above him.Who wouldn’t feel lonely, who wouldn’t feel small and shrinking and insignificant, who wouldn’t ache inside when faced with all of the universe spread out like a work of art?  His pain felt justified there, like it belonged.Lance was at home with the agony in his bones there, and he parked his car along the desolate road and walked for miles.  Climbed the stones, and looked up, and let himself hurt.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This has been sitting in my drafts for a month. Maybe once I post the first part I'll be motivated to finish it. Incubus Shiro, though, right? Right.

 

There was nowhere else for a hundred miles where the stars shone quite as brightly as they did there, just on the edge of the treeline, before the forest thickened enough to swallow men alive.  There was a rock formation, big and intimidating, and Lance didn’t know if it was an altar built millennia ago to worship some forgotten god or something more natural.  All he knew was he could climb up to the top, and the sky belonged to him.  He could hear the ocean, just barely.  It was a perfect place to be alone, lost in the heavens, nothing but stars and the magic inside him.  

 

Magic that refused to be useful.  Refused to be tamed, refused to be directed, refused to do anything besides hum restless under his skin.

 

Lance was lonely, but it wasn’t so glaring on top of the stones with galaxies spinning out above him.  

 

Who wouldn’t feel lonely, who wouldn’t feel small and shrinking and insignificant, who wouldn’t ache inside when faced with all of the universe spread out like a work of art?  His pain felt justified there, like it belonged.

 

Lance was at home with the agony in his bones there, and he parked his car along the desolate road and walked for miles.  Climbed the stones, and looked up, and let himself hurt.

 

It was the perfect place to be alone, until one day he reached the top of the rocks and found a woman there.

 

Dark skinned with long white hair and white eyes, she bled magic.  Lance could feel it in the air around her, powerful and crackling, but it didn’t seem dangerous to him, even if it was impossible.  

 

Magic that strong didn’t exist anymore.  It was a parlor trick nowadays.  There were telekinetics who could lift small objects, or pyrokinetics who could summon the tiniest of flames.  Electrokinetics might throw little sparks, or power low energy devices with a touch if they had the right adapters.  They were pick up lines at best, punch lines at worst, and rarely useful in any real way.  Licensed, and regulated, and categorized.

 

But this girl was like hurricane forced into human form.  She wore dozens of bracelets that seemed made of moonlight, and her white dress fluttered in a breeze that came from within her, gauzy layers shifting over thick, sultry thighs.  Narrow horns grew up from somewhere underneath her hair, as long as Lance's forearm, shimmering like they were made of rose quartz.  The palest of pinks, and the shape made Lance think of an antelope, the barest hint of a curve to them.  There were pink slashes underneath her eyes, too, and Lance would have said they were tattoos, if he wasn’t so sure she was otherworldly.  Other designs curved down her collarbones, etched white filigree swirling and twisting.  More curled around her ankles, sprawled over her feet.  Her nails looked like pearl and her lips shimmered opalescent.  Her hair fell in heavy waves down to her waist.

 

She was beautiful in a way that couldn’t quite be real, and Lance might have to start believing the ancient gods were still around, if only to worship her.  

 

“It’s you,” she gasped when she saw Lance, her solid white eyes throwing out light.  She whispered something he couldn’t quite track, teeth bright and smiling, hands reaching out as if to touch him.

 

Suddenly there was a swirl of shadows, and another figure appeared, the woman’s opposite in almost every way.  He was unnaturally pale with long, ink black hair.  It was shaved into an undercut and pulled back, the rest spilling down past his shoulders behind him.  His nails were obsidian dark, and they weren’t painted, but seemed to be made of stone.  Just like the horns curving out from his head, circular like a ram's, wordlessly threatening.  Black eyes peered at Lance, wide and disbelieving, black lips open to show viciously sharp canines.  Jet black markings seemed alive in his skin, those tattoos that weren’t tattoos, shifting on their own, rewriting themselves.  The robes he wore were from another time, another place, dark as night and swirling loose around his waist to leave his chest bare.  

 

The power radiating from him was like gravity, tugging everything into him instead of exploding outwards, a black hole plucked from space and thrown to earth.

 

He reached out and pressed a finger into Lance’s forehead, and in that instant Lance was thousands of years old.

 

Made of the sea, and of storms, and a servant of stars that had long since burned out.

 

“Finally,” he said, black eyes spinning with galaxies, looking at Lance like he’d just come home after eons away.

 

Then Lance woke up with a gasp, as though breaking the surface of the ocean, so close to drowning his lungs ached.

 

He was still on top of the stones, and the man and the woman were there but… different.  Less unearthly, less ethereal.  Allura’s eyes-

 

-how did he know their names, again?-

 

-were bright blue, a normal eye instead of a solid mask of white, and she wore a simple flowing white dress.  Her hair was still utterly white, not blonde or some variation of it, still wild around her shoulders.  The marks in her skin were no longer alive with motion, but clearly tattooed there.  Her nails were manicured instead of wrought from pearls, little gemstones glued into the tips.  She smiled at Lance like they were old friends, head cocked with worry.  

 

Keith wore a similar expression from where he sat next to her in black jeans and a faded band t-shirt, too many dark leather and corded bracelets climbing up his wrists, eyes violet and inquisitive.  His tattoos matched Allura’s, obviously a couple thing, and Lance had the urge to make fun of them for it, if only his mouth would work.  The black polish on his nails was chipped at the tips, as though he’d been chewing them.  He adjusted his ponytail, messy hair not quite reaching his shoulders now.  

 

They were both staring at Lance as though waiting for him to speak, and he sat up with a groan, the world rocking around him.  He felt drunk, and then oh, wait, there were empty bottles of wine all over the place.

 

Memories edged in, fuzzy and uncertain, of Allura and Keith showing up at the stones.  They’d emptied a few bottles of wine together, and gotten to know each other, and then Lance had passed out.

 

Hadn’t he?

 

It all felt a bit hazy, but Lance shoved the feeling aside with a grin and picked up a bottle, taking a healthy swig and asking about their magic.

 

They were often there when Lance came to the stones after that.  Lance spent dozens of nights with them, arguing with Keith and talking about stars with Allura, until it felt like he’d always known them.  Like they’d always been with him, like they belonged to the stones.

 

He’d originally gone there to be alone, but the two of them weren’t like other people.  

 

Lance could be alone, with them, somehow.  

 

If anything it made him feel more acutely like something was missing.  It was an emotion that followed Lance everywhere he went, a solitude that clung to him like smoke.  He went out to bars trying to pick up someone, anything to fight the unending loneliness, but never had any luck.  Pidge insisted he wasn’t really trying, and Hunk urged him not to stress it, that the right person would come around someday.

 

Lance just wanted to fall asleep with someone next to him.  He wasn’t made to be alone.  There was supposed to be someone wrapped up in his arms, someone breathing soft in his hair, someone whispering his name with reverence right before he drifted off.

 

And fuck, was getting laid too much to ask?

 

Virginity might be a social construct, but Lance felt it like a chain around his neck.

 

His dreams were vague but obscene, and there was always an edge of want in him, a knife constantly dragging sharp against Lance’s mind.

 

Lance was lonely, and miserable, and wanting one night, ready to cry for no reason at all, the idea of going back to bed alone and waking up alone and doing it all over again so terrible that he could barely breathe.  He went to the stones and found his friends there, but neither one of them spoke to him.   Allura reached around Keith’s neck and unfastened one of his necklaces, holding it out to Lance like an offering.

 

It was a glass vial full of what looked like blood, and Lance took it with furrowed brows.

 

“Some night soon it will storm, and you will feel just as you do now.  Empty and wrong and ready to break.  You’ll head out to the stones, and we won’t be here.  Hold this in your palm, and the words will come to you.  Then smash it on the rocks, and you won’t be alone.”

 

Allura and Keith wouldn’t answer any of his questions.  About the blood, about the spell, about anything.  Lance fell asleep that night on the stones, and woke up, and they were gone.

 

He found himself eager for rain.  Any time the sky darkened he held his breath, holding the glass vial at his throat, waiting.

 

But it was always soft and gentle and Lance knew the timing was wrong.

 

Lance went to work, and went home, and hung out with Hunk and Pidge.

 

Allura and Keith were never, ever at the stones anymore.  

 

The stars lost some of their shine when he looked at them now, like they were brighter with more eyes on them.  Then one night, a month later, the skies exploded and Lance could barely drive through the maelstrom.  Wind tried to throw his car off the road, and his windshield wipers attempts at battling the rain were pathetic and useless.

 

He stood on top of the stones, soaking wet with lighting strobing violently in the sky, and Lance knew Allura and Keith were more than a pretty hippie witch girl and a pseudo goth magician.  Those first glimpses of them, the ones they’d tried to pass off as dreams, that was the truth of them.

 

Allura was heavenly, and Keith was made of darkness, and Lance wondered why they both looked at him like he belonged with them.

 

Thunder crashed, and Lance held the glass vial in his fist, and Allura was right, the words were there.

 

They weren’t in any language that Lance had ever heard, but there were a few familiar phrases he picked up as they tripped out of his mouth, similar enough to his own native tongue that it was unmistakable.

 

Summon.  Storm.  Blood.

 

Incubus.

           

_ Incubus? _

 

He didn’t consciously decide to break the glass.  It was in his fist one moment, and the next there was blood at his feet, mixing in with rainwater from the storm and soaking into the stones.

 

Then lightning struck, and Lance fell, but never hit the ground.

 


End file.
